The metanarrative of disability: Social encounters, cultural representation and critical avoidance.

Cultural disability studies is an explicitly interdisciplinary field that synthesises scholarship in disability and various forms of cultural production. In order to probe that interdisciplinarity this chapter considers two interrelated questions. First, does the study of culture deepen our understanding of disability? Second, does the study of disability enrich our understanding of culture? To this end the avoidance of social encounters between disabled people and nondisabled people is analysed and theorised with reference to the influence of cultural representation. This discussion helps to explain how cultural disability studies can reduce the social impact of stereotypes (Hoffmann and Flamich 2016), and why disability studies increasingly pertains to cultural factors. But also illustrated is the fact that a critical appreciation of disability can greatly inform the study of cultural representations, be they literary, filmic, artistic, musical or whatever. The two interrelated questions raise a challenging issue, for although the field of cultural disability studies is undoubtedly growing, too often it continues to be ignored within the humanities. In effect, the avoidance of social encounters is duplicated in academia on a curricular level, a state of affairs thus termed critical avoidance